Since then, Nolan in my opinion has been batting 100. While a remake, Insomnia was equally as compelling, Batman Begins turned the comic book movie on its head, The Prestige was a wonderful period piece thriller and of course The Dark Knight was his The Godfather: Part II sequel to rival the original. As such, many a talent have felt in trustworthy hands to lend their talent to any of his outings. And as a fan, I have come to trust him more and more.
So, when I first heard of Nolan's new cerebral sci-fi thriller Inception, I knew we as an audience were in for a treat. And while I tend to shy away from Leonardo DiCaprio films (I feel he's been overhyped) I knew that there was a reason Nolan chose him. As such, I trusted his decision and waited to see what would happen. This trust was compounded when Nolan also attracted Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe, Marion Cotillard, Tom Berenger, Pete Postlethwaite, Tom Hardy and his mainstays Cillian Murphy and Michael Caine.
Having finally seen it last night, I can say that Nolan has once again earned my trust.
Inception is an entertaining, mind-bending thriller that is equally exhilarating and thought provoking. To say it is visually intense would be the understatement of the year. The film is stunning to watch taking one's perception of reality and spinning it around while still achieving a beautiful palette of color and motion imagery that masterfully runs between slow motion and frenetic action.
And it once again takes a genre and bends it around backward. In its most basic form, Inception is a heist movie in reverse. Instead of the characters trying to break in and steal something, they are breaking in to plant one thought into a person's head in order to alter his motivations and his actions. How do they do this? They enter his dream, construct a new reality and sink into his subconscious to find what could motivate him and make him self-realize the idea.
In this sense, there is not a stone that goes unturned and not a loose end left. Nolan has clearly thought his subject through a million times to make the film and the plot believable. It's not simply a matter of planting a thought in somebody's head as -- just like an invader in the person's dream -- the subconscious will seek out the foreign entity, reject and attack it. Thus, any world that is created in the dream state can be basically crafted but must have it's details filled in by the subject so they accept it as real.
Believe me... Nolan does not miss a thing in understanding the idea of dreams and how they both can be controlled by us and can control us. As such, he has crafted a film that is truly exceptional.
My only problem with the film actually relates to a problem I had in the Dark Knight. In the Dark Knight, the final climactic battle between Batman and the Joker takes place in a building under construction. During this sequence, Batman has to move between floors and rooms quickly in order to save hostages and take out the Joker's henchmen.
My problem with this sequence was that Nolan did not create a focal point to define for audience precisely where in space the action was happening. As such, anytime Batman moved between a floor or a room -- which under construction all looked the same -- it didn't seem like he was doing anything. While ultimately I understood what was happening logicaly, visually Batman could very well have been fighting the same people in one room or on two floors.
The same thing happens in Inception when Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character has to create a "kick", which in the film is sudden change in gravity that makes people feel like they're falling in order to wake them up from whatever dream they are in. At the time, the characters are all in zero-gravity (you'll have to see it to understand) and so he ties them up and puts them in an elevator and proceeds to attach explosives to the elevator in order to make an artificial gravity.
In this sequence, he has to move around the elevator to cut cables and attach explosives. However, while he is moving around and around, since there is no defined point in space, it is as if he could very well have been in one place for each shot. Of course, you understand that he had to move around the elevator. But visually it doesn't translate without a point in space to define where he is.
That is a very minor point of complaint and is the only problem I had with the film. Apart from that, Inception is brilliant. It ranks up there with Blade Runner and 2001: A Space Odyssey in terms of intelligent science fiction that makes you think long after you leave the theatre. And though it is intelligent, it is also thrilling to watch. As such, if you're looking to be wholly entertained while at the same time having something to think about, rest assured you'll love Inception.
As far as I'm concerned, Inception is the best film this year so far.
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